20" Cinema Display Dead

My wife in her wisdom sprayed ant killer near my MacPro (a major offence), so I hurriedly disconnected all my rig. On reconnecting the display I'm getting no picture. Sometimes the power doesn't even register. Other times I'm getting a series of short flashing light and long and the short I think. The computer and my laptop both report seeing it, but cannot use.

I have done a search and have found info about it being an inverter board or backlight. I'm really peeved as although it's about 2 1/2 years old it has been flawless and excellent quality. I bought it from a company called Cancom in the UK. Does anyone know if I should be talking to them or direct to Apple?

Are you at all handy? Swap out the inverter board yourself, it's really not that hard to do.

Click to expand...

Really? I am not too bad, so maybe I will. I have diagnosed the fault lights and they point to a power supply failure or inverter board. I'm arranging to go into Cancom tomorrow hopefully. I know that the 30" ACD power brick can be used on it so I'm hoping I can check it on that first. If that works I'll just buy the brick, if not I'll look on eBay (i've seen the board on there).

Assuming your display is now blinking short long short from the power button.

I searched the web 'extensively' before i found this very simple fix:

The long term solution would appear to be an upgrade to the 150w power brick used on the 30 inch displays, I have been down the road of buying a new 65W brick only to find the same problem persists. The solution is...

Take out the power feed line to the display from the power brick. There is a series of 5 silver connectors in the female (display) side of the power feed and you need to insulate or isolate the centre connector from the power supply. This appears to be some form of earth feedback from the display which 'randomly' seems to shut the display inverter board down. I understand from other threads that it was designed as some sort of protection for the display but appears to have gone mad and has shut down hundreds of the displays.

Anyway, you can push a very small bit of tape into the display power feed just to cover the centre connections or (this is how I chose to do it) get some insulation tape and push a very small slice into the power brick side of the supply to cover the centre notch (which is the male part of the connector). Each way simply isolates that centre connector.

I was very dubious about this but having been quoted anything from £100 to £300 for a possible repair I decided that it was worth a go. Well the result is that I am typing this to you on my 3 year old cinema display that has been on a shelf for 6 months following the problem. it took me 10 minutes of fiddling with slivers of insulation tape but i feel like a repair god.

I will link you to the original site if you need.

give it a go cos as they say in the Dr Pepper ad - what's the worst that can happen.

Assuming your display is now blinking short long short from the power button.

I searched the web 'extensively' before i found this very simple fix:

The long term solution would appear to be an upgrade to the 150w power brick used on the 30 inch displays, I have been down the road of buying a new 65W brick only to find the same problem persists. The solution is...

Take out the power feed line to the display from the power brick. There is a series of 5 silver connectors in the female (display) side of the power feed and you need to insulate or isolate the centre connector from the power supply. This appears to be some form of earth feedback from the display which 'randomly' seems to shut the display inverter board down. I understand from other threads that it was designed as some sort of protection for the display but appears to have gone mad and has shut down hundreds of the displays.

Anyway, you can push a very small bit of tape into the display power feed just to cover the centre connections or (this is how I chose to do it) get some insulation tape and push a very small slice into the power brick side of the supply to cover the centre notch (which is the male part of the connector). Each way simply isolates that centre connector.

I was very dubious about this but having been quoted anything from £100 to £300 for a possible repair I decided that it was worth a go. Well the result is that I am typing this to you on my 3 year old cinema display that has been on a shelf for 6 months following the problem. it took me 10 minutes of fiddling with slivers of insulation tape but i feel like a repair god.

I will link you to the original site if you need.

give it a go cos as they say in the Dr Pepper ad - what's the worst that can happen.

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